Chapter 38

The light was spilling in but Sarah backed away, nervous. “I don’t know. Are we sure that they’re gone?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“No,” Christopher followed right afterwards. I shot him a dirty look.

Sarah took another step back. “I think that we could maybe wait? Just a bit longer?” she suggested. “What about— What’s this?” She had kept stepping back until she was sliding along the back wall. We hadn’t thoroughly investigated the small cave, taking it for what it seemed, but she suddenly took a step to the side and disappeared from view, sliding into the rock wall.

“What!? How did we miss that!?” Rose exclaimed.

Christopher was already at her side, looking into the gap that we had missed. “Ok… possible new plan: see if there is another way out of this cave network.”

Sarah didn’t need to be told twice, but she did need to come back out, the passageway too narrow to easily turn around in, and no one thought it would be a good idea to proceed backwards. She led though, the two of us following her as the slit in the wall curved, running further back and then parallel with the mountainside until the tunnel opened larger. Christopher was right behind her, and as soon as we were out in the open, he pulled out his third and final torch, sparking it to life.

We stood around in an open cavern, in the middle of which sat a nest of long grass and mud and branches, and in the nest sat over half a dozen eggs. About half were a deep red that absorbed the torchlight while the others were light green, three and four of each, respectively.

We all had the same thought at once. “Baby dragons!” Sarah whisper-shouted in something between excitement and abject dread.

“That explains why there were two of them,” Christopher followed.

I couldn’t recall Scolffice ever teaching us that different kinds of dragons could breed, but the proof was right there.

“Sarah, no!” Christopher told her, grabbing her shoulder as she took a couple steps toward the clutch of eggs. “Ok, we really need to get out of here.” He stepped to the tunnel. “If they aren’t back already, then at least one of—”

“SQUEEEEAAAAWWWWWW!!!!!” We all turned to the horrible screech. The kite dragon had returned to the cave, crawling inside without a sound and spotting us. It was a mess of dried blood and white bones, but it half crawled, half pulled itself along to the nest, jumping forward with each step as soon as it saw us.

“RUN!” Rose screamed in my head as the three of us didn’t waste breath on announcing the obvious move. Christopher dropped his torch as he pushed me and Sarah ahead of him. I squeezed through the gap in the mountain, shuffling as fast as I could, wincing as my knees scraped rock walls. We rushed out of the smaller cave, sliding on the rock as we ran. The dragon had seen us rush out of its cave, that much was obvious, and if they knew about the smaller side cave, we would be cooked with a single blast from the fire dragon.

We made it out into the early morning light. The tip of the green tail was just entering the cave entrance beside us, an open maw we would have surely noticed if the small crack we had fled into hadn’t been spotted first. The kite dragon stayed inside, I didn’t see it coming back out as we ran. But we had another problem to deal with.

At the sound of its partner’s call, the fire dragon must have rushed over. It flew overhead and blasted the trees in front of us with fire. We collectively redirected and I prayed it wasn’t fencing us in. It slammed into the ground in front of us, blocking the path. It was possibly bloody but hard to distinguish in the heat of the moment with the matching scales. The bones breaking the protective layer of scales were few and shallow, most of the stab wounds now empty as they had barely gotten past the thicker scales.

“Split up!” Christopher shouted, darting one way while Sarah sprinted the other, activating her magic to go faster.

I followed behind her, trying to keep up, as the dragon roared, swiping a wing claw over our heads. The two reached the tip of the tail as I got past the bulk of its body, reaching its back legs when I suddenly felt something cut into the back of my neck. I screamed, panicking along with Rose as the dragon dug its teeth into the collar of my cloak and shirt, hoisting me up.

Christopher turned just as he and Sarah were about to get away. She saw me and started running, but Christopher pulled her back and they made a break for the thicket.

The dragon huffed in my ear as it shook me violently. I couldn’t see anything. I’m sorry, Rose, I thought, we’re going to die after all.

“Save those words for after it happens!” she snapped back at me. “I don’t believe they would just leave you here!”

My vision blurred as my life flashed before my eyes. Both this one and the sparse recollection of my past one, colliding in a kaleidoscope of memories. I saw my father. I saw school. I saw Rose. I saw Sarah. Then I realized she was real.

Sarah waved her arms frantically. I watched as dozens of woodland animals suddenly surged from behind her in a tsunami of fur and claws, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, a few badgers. They swarmed the fire dragon, latching onto its wings and feet, crawling upwards, covering it in a seemingly endless onslaught of fauna.

They did nothing. Not in the sense that they had no impact, the dragon faltered, stopping its assault on concussing me, but they just crawled upwards. One leapt onto the foot, a rather chubby squirrel that looked extremely well fed, yet it felt like it weighed nothing.

“It’s an illusion!” Rose exclaimed, adding to the growing headache and nausea from being shaken like a child’s rattle.

The dragon seemed to clue into the confusion situation a second later, shaking and fanning its wings to no effect and then noticing that they were just running around it, not biting or hurting or even weighing it down.

I just looked down at Sarah. “How was that supposed to help!?” I blurted in frustration at the situation.

“It was a destruction!” I heard her yell.

“It wasn’t very destructive!” I screamed back as the dragon resumed shaking me like a rag doll.

“No, it was a distraction!” she repeated as an illusory badger sat itself between the dragon’s eyes, slapping it in the face pointlessly. But it did make the dragon stop moving for another second.

I was about to ask what she was talking about right before three daggers and a short sword embedded themselves up to their hilts into the dragon’s neck and snout, narrowly missing me. If the dragon had been moving more, I’m certain they may have sliced my face to ribbons. Instead, it dropped me, bellowing as it more freely shook the longer blade loose from its nose.

“Come on!” Christopher yelled, popping out from behind a tall bush.

My steps were uneven, my head was spinning and I felt so dizzy I was ready to puke, but the two of them pulled me along. The dragon roared behind us but we got closer and closer to camp, but with the pursuit, we weren’t going to make it, our headstart getting shorter and shorter. A second roar accompanied the first, the kite dragon joining the hunt. Fire flew over us, igniting trees that we tried to make sure were more compliant targets than ourselves. The roots and chaotic placement of trees and bushes on the ground helped, forcing us to skirt diagonally, splitting and rejoining every few steps. A burst of red flew over, belching flames on either side before landing in our way. We whirled around, only to see the kite dragon staring back at us. Apparently the theory that it wouldn’t be adept at pursuing us through the forest was untrue, even in its injured form. Its wings were out stretched, its talons dripping with blood, and its mouth snapping toward us as it blocked us in.

“Sarah, run past it, now! Ren, you can fly! Go, the both of you!” Christopher ordered as our deaths approached.

Sarah whimpered, tearing up, shaking her head.

I hurried, trying to channel my mana, but it felt weaker than it had the past couple days. I was still able to get some lift, trying to push above my friends’ waists, but I couldn’t focus enough. And I couldn’t leave them. “Sarah, can you do that trick with the animals again?” I quickly asked but she just shook her head. Even her squirrel features were looking faded and smaller. I turned beside her. “Christopher, more blades!?” He simply batted open his cloak, showing nothing holstered on him.

I looked at the fire dragon. It looked back, then up, readying to finish us off. There was nowhere to go; a mate ready to skewer us from behind, or a wall of fire on either side. The dragon’s head pointed straight up, and it grunted, and held up its head. I’m sorry, Rose, I told my sister. No answer came, just a wave of sorrow. The dragon’s head stayed upright, poised to blast us away, and I waited, holding my breath. My lungs soon squeezed though as I kept waiting, the dragon with its head still up, and I gasped for breath.

The dragon collapsed, spasming as it fell. Its head rolled to the side, massive eyes blinking wildly as it vomited fire safely away from us. It kept shaking as a lone figure strolled over its body, walking up the wing until it stood at the base of the mighty beast’s neck.

Captain Hector.